My Flash Recovery

Sunday, August 2

Stay Pirata. Pirata, get out of my way! Leave the chickens alone, Pirata. Chew on this chunk of adobe, Pirata. Le tiré una piedra a Pirata y se entretuvo. Pirata doesn’t let you do pull-ups without sacrificing your shoes and lower legs to scratch posts. Pirata, sal de la clase! Quítate de aquí, Pirata! Pirata no nos deja ir solos a ningún lugar. Les vi a Uds dos corriendo con Pirata por la mañana. Pirata, deja al otro Pirata y sal de ahí!

Pirata, as earlier posts give away, is the most outgoing and protective of our 3 host dogs. He goes everywhere with us and eats rocks and adobe blocks in his free time. He gets in the face of any dog he sees on the street and will enter any room to follow us, even if it is our classroom and he is doing it for the 300th time. Because of him and because of Betsy, the little diabla next door, we have resorted to closing the front door of the classroom.

Running in the fresh of the farms this morning to the tune of 33 minutes and 46 seconds. 20 minutes of exercise on the jungle gym to top it off. Usual push-ups, ab workouts, pull-ups were supplemented by rookie appearances of adobe blocks as shoulder dumbbells, and old car tires loaded with rocks for bicep workouts.

Our first appointment of the day is as visitors to Juan´s church in the center of Ica at 10:30 am. This gives us time to wash a few shirts, make a to-do list and a shopping list, and have a breakfast of black lentils, rice, leftover drink of maíz tostado molido, bread and butter, as well as lechuga. As Da Vinci once said: “That was one of my favorite breakfasts yet.”

El Shaddai is Juan´s church, and it happens to be in a very nice part of town, nearby many of the NGOs and the United Nations office. It feels different finding ourselves there, without cameras (ok we brought a flipcam) doing real life instead of investigating and running around doing interviews. Its Christian and very modern in its style. Juan affectionately calls it: “Un escandolo, pura fiesta!” (Scandolous, all partying). Brooke says it familiar. Adam says the demographic of the church is interesting – all Peruvian run and made up of what seem to be many middle class to upper class residents of Ica. Juan is neither, but seems to have established himself as a leader within the church for his unabashed expression of his love for Jesus.

On the ride to church he used the analogy of a clogged gas filter to preach to the moto taxi driver. Later, over dinner he recounted how he has been fortunate enough to have debated religion with Peruvian leaders of all 12 religions present in the country. Bahaii is not one of them, and Adam would like it recorded that he has met with a Bahaii who claims they have a decent presence in this country. Anyways, Juan goes into depth about religion muchas veces. And watches preachers on TV all the time. No one else in the family joins in except the mom and dad sometimes with agreeing statements.

Church ran from 10:45am to 1:25pm. We split up with Juan to withdraw cash from downtown, as well as pick up 32 more AA batteries for the kids´ (ages 14-28) flipcams, make copies of a new storyboard example, update the blog, buy plaintains and milk for our family, and splurge on $1.30 worth of ice cream.

By the time we got back to Señor de Luren, where the classroom is, it was 3:20pm. Class started at 4pm so we set about setting everything up. Luz María next door needs to called out to open up the place since she holds the only key to the place. The TV needs to be borrowed from the house across the canal. The extension cord needs to be strung to another house across the canal. The table needs to be rearranged for TV viewing ease. The chairs need to be set out, as well as the tables for the computer for uploading and the TV. The video camera needs to be set up on a tripod to film the class. Today, we arrive early enough to set it up to catch students as they walk in the door. The white board needs to be filled with the schedule for the day and the homeworks for tomorrow. The printouts need to be set out for the kids to grab as they come in. Ok, so I understand real teachers are used to all this but for us it takes a bit of time, besides I actually don’t think teachers have to deal with borrowing all kinds of stuff before hand to make sure the class takes place.

It’s a good sign when you have students showing up early (i.e. within the first 10 mins past the set time). Especially if they show up earlier than they did last time. We had 4 students by 4:08pm. Its even cooler when you see one of those kids running to class with a new notebook. His name is Brahayan, and he is 14. Rocio shows up briefly to let us know she is in charge of caring for some visitors and has to run back and forth between the class and her house to make sure they are taken care of. Impressive. Jimmy, who didn´t show up last time, makes an entrance with last classes homework done in precise style. By 4:25pm we have 8 students, 1 we have yet to see past the intro class, and the other is taking her entrance exams to get into university.

Sundays must be good days, cuz the students seem to get more and more into critiquing each others´ work. Many brought notebooks and writing utensils to take notes. After catching everyone up to speed, we watch the interviews on history of their town that the students brought in. Amazyingly, many of them did a great job without even trying. One of them interviewed her Grandparents and accidentally aligned them both in the shot appropriately. More than that they were discussing the lack of reconstruction and the difference between before the earthquake and now. Apparently by accident the background was half brick from the new home built for them by an NGO and the other half temporary housing they still live in due to the small size of their NGO-donated home. Another films his great aunt who was one of the founders of the town. She discusses how the place came to be named Manco Cápac. She is very old. In the background is a clock that reads 10:25pm and ticks later as the video progresses. This clock sits on an old piece of furniture. Another interview frames a neighbor peering over his wooden fence as he discusses how the upper part of town invaded the lower part and took political control some 30 odd years ago. Turns out taking advantage of excluded groups occurs locally on some scale as well as on any other level of society.

From the interviews we move into introducing storyboarding. Storyboarding is basically rough planning for your video – a process which consists of drawing scenes as comic snapshots and explaining below details on the shot. This skill is especially useful when using the flipcams since it allows one to film an entire video in order since you have already planned everything out. We expect them to be normal people and take some time to get used to it – as in weeks or at least a couple classes. But they shatter our expectations. One in particular, Malu (Luz María), really keeps the storyboard discussion going by clarifying and answering questions while others seemed a bit confused by the connection between comics and videos. We later find out she studied art in college. She would be great at continuing a class like this.

Before we have finished explaining the two examples we have made for them, they are ready to do an example together on the board. Halfway through the example on the board and they are clamoring for pencils and paper to begin drawing and working on a story of their choosing. When the idea of groups is brought up as a possibility, they murmur for awhile and thirty seconds later the room rearranges and we have 4 groups of 2. 14 year old Brahayan and twentysome year old but married with kids Rocio work quietly together on a story of a witch interrupting a dinner in town and being beaten. Alison and Carlos tackle a video of how the park is being used by kids. Yubi and Jimmy decide to storyboard a story they had heard from their interview of a bunch of thieves being buried alive in the hole they had been using to stash local wealth. Malu and Cecilia drew out plans for a family that wants to adopt and ends up mistreating the kid in the end. One might say that Cecilia and Malu win the artistic award, but all the work was outta this world so it wouldn’t make sense from a scale/dial perspective. Actually all the storyboards were amazingly done from an aesthetic perspective. We heard one comment about not being able to draw, but it didn’t show through in the end. Rather, the result was one of colored sketches, ruler straightness, and even a one-point perspective drawing.

Fussing with their sketches, the students requested to stay later, and we ended up finishing 1.5 hours later than the scheduled time simply hanging out as they worked intensely. Impressed, we set the homework bar high and requested they also make another storyboard, this time about a typical day in the life of one of the partners and to also film one of them completely by next class (Thursday). By Saturday, both will be filmed, and this will mark the end of the “get to know your camera and have fun stage of the class.” From there we will test out our NGO evaluation idea, and see if they are into it.

After that we thank the TV and extension cord neighbors for letting us borrow their things and pack up for home. Dinner is waiting – pollo estofado, chicken tomatoey stew with potatotes and peas over rice and lettuce. Soup also with bread and tea to follow.

Tomorrow, Yubi, one of our students is interested in joining us on our morning run. Que chevere says Brooke, since she assumes she will no longer be the slowest in the group. We shall see.